It's budget time again and that means taxes in Cochrane are going up. While a tax increase is not necessarily a given every year, it has been for the past few and they are projected to continue going in that direction for the next three years. On Dec. 10, council will vote on a draft budget that includes a 2.98 per cent tax increase with a similiar increase until 2021 at least that is how it is being touted. In fact, those moderate increases are contingent on the town continuing to grow at a rate of four per cent. If that fails to happen, the increase will actually be higher – 7.6 per cent this year if the unlikely no-growth scenario occurs. The $65 annual increase - or $5.41 a month - is also disingenuous. Since the town is forecasting its budget needs three years in advance, we can already predict that the tax bill increase by 2021 will be $200 more a year out of household budgets and for many people that is significant. Coun. Marni Fedeyko compared the increase to "the equivalent of a couple lattes or one combo meal at most fast food restaurants." This is not a charity telethon, people are not choosing to spend their hard earned dollars, it is being taxed. As such, council is taking the option for people to spend their money on a latte or a combo meal away. They are also taking that revenue from local businesses. We're not necessarily saying the tax increases are not justified to manage the town's growth - which is a whole other argument - but governments should treat taxation with more respect than telling people what they can give up to cover the cost. To add insult to injury, council will also be looking at increasing gross pay of mayor and council to compensate for tax law changes that previously exempted one-third of their salary from income tax. While council says it is not a raise because it is not increasing net pay, the general public is going to see that as semantics. Again, this comes down to respect of taxpayers. Optically, increasing gross salaries while increasing taxes is not going to win them many friends, especially since no one in the general workforce has the luxury of a wage increase under similiar circumstances. That being said, we don't necessarily disagree with councillors' pay being bumped up to compensate for the decrease in take-home pay. Prior to the change in tax law, councillors were earning $28,500 annually for the part-time position. Under the proposed change, the wage would be $33,600. Councillors work a lot of hours by nature of the position and part-time, while the official classification, might not be reflective of the hours some of them work (see story on page xxx). With that in mind, it is important that in order to attract qualified people to the job the salary be worth the time. We might be in the minority though. An online (unscientific) poll put up on our Facebook page garnered more registered 635 against a pay increase to compensate for taxes and 105 in favour. However, while we can see the case for council salaries moving to compensate for the tax change, we have trouble supporting it for the mayor's salary. Currently, the mayor is earning $84,671 annually or $1,628 a week compared to the average Albertan who only earns $1,168 a week. The increase would bring that weekly wage to $1,915 for the mayor - $99,600 annually. Again, the mayor should be compensated to reflect the job, which takes up a lot of time and is well over the regular work week. However, keep in mind, the average Albertan's earning stats do include overtime, so the mayor's position in Cochrane is already well compensated compared to the average Albertan. While the approximately $45,000 the salary change will incur to the budget is negligible when considering the overall $74 million in expenditures, it comes down to principle and the fact that people are being continuously asked to pay more, whether it is through taxes or general cost of living and many are not seeing additional wages. Politicians need to do a better job respecting that reality. * this article was corrected to reflect the change in the budget due to the salary increase is $35,000, the original mistakenly calculated increases not associated with the exemption
